If you belong to the rare group of people who gets their Christmas shopping done early on every year, you most likely receive a great deal of unpleasant glance from others around the festive season. This is particularly true if routinely let others know that you have already done all of your Christmas shopping. The reason for all the mean looks is that the best part of the public does not get their Christmas shopping and still have to go through the stress of overcrowded shopping malls and unavailable items. The fact that malls and shopping centers are so over-crowded in the last few days before Christmas proves that so many people wait until the last opportunities to buy something.

If you are part of that vast majority of people who spend every year last minute Christmas shopping and hate yourself for it each and every year, here are some tips to get your Christmas shopping done and over with quickly this year.

A first suggestion to get your Christmas shopping done is doing a great deal of Christmas shopping for the next year in the first few days after Christmas. This may sound weird and is only an option of it is financially possible for you. On the other hand, if you do this every year, you will actually save quite some money, since many shops are holding sales in these days. All the shops still carry typical Christmas gift items and you are probably very much in the Christmas spirit. Also, you usually have the best gift ideas right after the gift giving of this year.

A second idea for completing your Christmas shopping in time is to shop online. This is the best option if you are shopping for Christmas gifts for faraway relatives. Most online retailers will wrap your gift in an elegant box and send it directly to the recipient. Now you won’t have to wrap it up by yourself and stand in the line at the post office.

A third plan to get your Christmas shopping done early is spreading it over the whole year. Whenever you have to go out to buy a birthday gift for someone, buy two gifts for this person. One of the gifts is for the birthday and you store the other one for Christmas. This strategy does work best if you have a very solid group of people that you buy gifts for, like family members. You might still need to do some last minute shopping for a new colleague or any other distant friend.

Of course, there are people who love last minute Chrismas shopping. Some of them might see it as
a challenge. Other shoppers intentionally wait until the last minute to do their Christmas shopping because they like the excitement of the crowds. It gives them a sense of energy and get right into the Christmas spirit. However, joining the crowds for the atmosphere, while in your head you know that all shopping is done and wrapped at home already, or on the way by post to distant relatives, might be more relaxed.

Christmas really starts when you are decorating your tree and it is really recommended to get into the right spirit. Whether you are bringing in a natural evergreen or took your artificial tree down from the attic, here are some guidelines for making the whole experience a little less chaotic.

Choosing the Christmas tree.

If your Christmas tree is going to look really good or not could depend on the sort of tree you choose. There are actually some kinds of trees that are easier to decorate than others. Pine is the sort of evergreen tree that is most likely going to lose its needles quickly and turn into a pathetic stump. When it comes to holding Christmas ornaments, the best species of trees are firs and spruces. Their branches are sturdy and do not bend under the weight of a glass Christmas ornament. Of course, artificial trees are perfectly fine as well.

If you chose for decorating a real tree, make sure it is fresh. When buying the tree, test the freshness of the tree by bending the branches. A good and fresh tree will bend a bit and will easily support your Christmas ornaments. If the branches snap when you try to bend it, don’t buy the tree. This tree is not fresh, will probably not support your decorations and is also very likely to drop its needles very soon.

Preparing the decorations.

Start with the Christmas mat or skirt. They can hide the stand, decorate and catch dropped needles all the same time. It is a very useful part of your Christmas decorations. You can’t slip a Christmas tree skirt over the tree’s head and lifting up a decorated tree is not the best advice either. So, this is the first step of decorating your tree, before the other decorations.

It is very likely that last year you just stripped everything off the tree and threw it in a box. Perhaps your Christmas tree lights are all knotted up.  This is a bad start. The old saying is “as it begins, so it ends and so it begins again.” This counts for decorating a Christmas tree as well. Make a vow now to do it in a different way this year and clean up everything in an ordered manner so that you don’t need to squander time sorting through broken Christmas ornaments and piles of old tinsel.

So, this year we will still have to start with unsnarling the lights. Then make sure that all the bulbs are working before you try to wrap them around the tree. There is a possibility that if you try to change the bulbs while they are on the tree that a spark could set fire to the tree and turn it into an untimely bonfire.  

Start decorating the tree.

When draping the lights over the tree, make sure that the light bulbs are not rested against any branches. Hot bulbs could heat up the needles and catch fire, especially if you did not check the tree when you bought it and you came home with a dry tree.  The absolutely safest trees are pre-lit artificial Christmas trees as some of them have automatic shut-down features if they get too hot.

 Decorating Christmas trees is all about proportion. The largest sized Christmas ornaments should go at the bottom of the tree and the smallest one at the top. The result is just more pleasant to the eye.

Make your tree personal by adding heirlooms, Christmas cards and personalized Christmas ornaments, but remember less is always more. A good way to avoid of creating a jumble of your most favorite ornaments and other decorations is to choose a theme for your tree. A color theme is the simplest way to keep your Christmas tree in style, but a tree could also be decorated after traditions. E.g. a Country style theme with wooden ornaments or a German tree mostly decorated with food.

The last part of your Christmas tree is the tinsel. It is amazing how many people just throw handfuls of tinsel at the tree which will then look like clumps of spaghetti or major hairballs. Tinsel is supposed to give the tree a frozen look. Imagine how real icicles look when they would be hanging from your tree and hang little strings only at the edges of the branches.

The belief of Santa, who gives presents, brings an extra thrill for many kids to the merry season. St Nicholas, the jolly, round man dressed in a red cloak and hat decorated with white fur, who brings gifts in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. His reindeer sleigh flies him from house to house so he can plunge down the chimney pots to fill stockings with presents ready to find on Christmas morning. It is not strange that parents want to hold their children’s belief in Santa Claus as long as possible. How to come with hard evidence of the existence of Santa?

Write to Santa
Start with writing a letter to Santa. Santa is very much up to date of technologies and he is able to receive emails as well. Look on the internet to find Santa’s website that allows your child to write a letter and leave a wish list. A good service will send a reply to your kid, which will prove the existence of Santa. Otherwise, you will have to send the reply yourself, which s usually also possible through Santa’s website. Add a few lines on your kid’s friends, teacher, pets, so your kid will believe that Santa knows all about him.

Track Santa
In the days prior to Christmas, show your kids how hard Santa is working to get everything ready for Christmas. It is now possible to track Santa’s whereabouts on the Internet. Norad says it uses a spy satellite to pick up the glow from Rudolph’s nose. Fly around the world just like Santa with Google Earth.

Meet Santa
Take your kids to see Santa Claus at the mall. Be near so you can listen to everything that they tell Santa. However, be sure to not take your kids to a different mall with another Santa…

Presents
Place a few presents with the same wrapping paper under your Christmas tree before Christmas Eve night so your kids can see them. Explain that that are the presents mommy and daddy bought. Sneak in other presents with different wrappings on Christmas Eve, after your children have gone to bed. React as surprised as they are, when they find them on Christmas morning.

Mince pies and Sherry
Before bedtime on Christmas Eve let your kids prepare some food for Santa. His known favorites are mince pies and sherry. Leave some out for him in the living room. Enjoy Christmas Eve yourself and drink the sherry and eat mince pie. Of course, you can’t do the dishes, but have to leave them where your kids left it. Make sure you leave some crumbs on the plate.

Reindeer bells
Buy some bells. A little bit after bedtime go outside, (make sure you are out of view of your child’s bedroom window) and ring your bells to imitate the sound of bells on the reindeer collars.

Buying Christmas gifts is for many an easy task as we are spoilt with options in abundance. Children are by far the easiest to find something for. Practically all kids love toys and every year there is a wide selection of new toys coming to the market. Unfortunately, Christmas shopping is not always that easy when it comes to finding the perfect present for a person that seems to have everything already.

A personalized Christmas gift is an excellent idea for almost anyone, since you can be sure that he or she doesn’t have it yet. The first step of finding the right gift is to think about your friend or relative. What kinds of hobbies or activities do they like? Are they a fisherman, golfer, or tennis player? Do they enjoy music or books? Do they love movies? See if you can come up with a Christmas gift related to their interests.

Christmas gifts should show some feeling and importance to the person that you are buying it Don’t just choose a commercial best-seller gift. To make your gift stand out from the rest and make an impression, you can personalize the gifts. Personalized gifts are an exceptional way to show your respect and can be used for showing your appreciation to outstanding employees, or your thanks to special clients in the corporate world. A personalized gift shows that it is not just one of many in stock that you are handing out to all your friends or business contacts, but that you have bought it for that unique person with a reason. It shows you care.

When you think about personalizing your gifts, it is normally best to have it done by a professional. Personalizing a gift at home can turn into a disaster and your gift might have a used or damaged look if you do not do it professionally. Let’s say that you buy some jewelry for a beloved one and you want it to be engraved with initials or a message. Imagine what it would look like if you tried to do that by yourself. You would definitely need a professional to do that job for you.

The internet will give you access to any kind of personalized gift, from monogrammed baby blankets to personalized picture frames, and from engraved golf clubs to personalized Christmas ornaments.

We can hardly imagine a Christmas without gifts. Christmas is a unique celebration of merry making and gift-giving. The custom of giving presents in this time of the year owes its origin to the Magi. The magi, as you know, were wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.  They came from the east of Jerusalem to greet the Babe in the manger with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Although the Magi are associated more with the Feast of Epiphany on January 6, they can be considered as the initiators of the gift-giving ritual following the birth of Jesus. In America giving presents at Christmas was not a custom until not long ago. It arrived with the introduction of St. Nicholas by the early Dutch settlers. Giving presents at New Year was a more common practice, especially amid the English and French settlers. But the joint German and Dutch influences in time resulted in all gift-giving to be done at Christmas.

The first advertising for Christmas presents originates from the early 1800s, around 1804. By the 1820s ads began to spring up more and more, and by the 1840s Christmas gifts were an fundamental part American Society. What had once been the undemanding practice of giving small gifts exploded into the consumer driven holiday we now know.

Many people are annoyed that Christmas today is all about presents, and state that is was not like when they were a kids. In reality people have been saying that for over 150 years already. In a story from the 1850s we learn that people said at that time already that it was not like when they were kids and that people were wasting a lot of money in the holiday season. And it is correct that the commercialization of Christmas happened in that period.

However, it can also be said that the gifts are getting bigger, more expensive and more extravagant in time. It is getting harder and harder to find a ‘special’ Christmas gift, especially when you have to find that one special gift among the heaps of commercial rubbish sold everywhere.